Disambiguation note: This Australian group should not be confused with groups who later adopted the same name, including a Minneapolis-based indie-rock group, a Rhode Island bluegrass band, and an Oregon acoustic group.

The Rank Strangers were an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n bluegrass

Bluegrass music

Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...

 band that won multiple national and international awards during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Random House’s 1991 book Australian Country Music declared the Rank Strangers to be among the major figures of the 1990s Australian music scene, along with Keith Urban

Keith Urban

Keith Lionel Urban is a New Zealand-born Australian, country music singer, songwriter and guitarist whose commercial success has been mainly in the United States and Australia. Urban was born in New Zealand and began his career in Australia at an early age...

 and country legend Slim Dusty

Slim Dusty

David Gordon "Slim Dusty " Kirkpatrick AO, MBE was an Australian country music singer-songwriter and producer, with a career spanning nearly eight decades. He was known to record songs in the legacy of Australian poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson that represented the Australian Bush...

. Australian Country Music observed that "the Rank Strangers have a musical immediacy that typifies the best of bluegrass and recalls such players as The Stanley Brothers

The Stanley Brothers

The Stanley Brothers were an American bluegrass duo made up of brothers Carter and Ralph Stanley.-Biography:Carter and Ralph Stanley hailed originally from Dickenson County, Virginia. The family soon moved to McClure, Virginia where their parents worked a small farm in the Clinch Mountains...

 and Bill Monroe

Bill Monroe

William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...

."

Members

• Peter Somerville (vocals and banjo)
• Philomena Carroll (vocals and bass)
• Andrew Hook (mandolin)
• Eddie Rambeaux (stage name for Gary Forrester
  Gary Forrester
  Gary Forrester is a New Zealand-Australian musician, composer, novelist, poet, and memoirist. He was profiled by Random House Australia as one of the major figures in the Australian music scene during the 1980s and 1990s...
  
  ) (songwriter, singer, and guitarist)
• Gerry Hale (fiddle and mandolin)

Other occasional members included Belinda Moody on bass, Ian Tritt on mandolin, Di McNicholl on guitar and vocals, and other Australian and American instrumentalists.

Work

The bulk of their record albums consisted of original material, although they also included time-honoured bluegrass standards in their repertoire. Following the band’s break-up in the early 1990s, Somerville and Hale went on to lead bands of their own, while Forrester embarked on a career as a writer. (See, e.g., Houseboating in the Ozarks, Dufour Editions, 2006, which includes a fictionalized account of the Rank Strangers.)

In 1988, the Rank Strangers swept the Australian Gospel Music Awards in Tamworth

Tamworth, New South Wales

Tamworth is a city in the New England region of New South Wales, Australia. Straddling the Peel River, Tamworth, which contains an estimated population of 47,595 people, is the major regional centre for southern New England and in the local government area of Tamworth Regional Council. The city...

, New South Wales, winning Best Group, Best Male Vocalist, and Best Composition. In 1989 and 1990, Dust on the Bible (RCA Records, Nicholls & Dimes) and Uluru (Larrikin Records) both placed in the top five for the overall Australian Country Music Awards.

In 1990-91, their third album, Kamara, was released to coincide with tours of Australia and the USA. These tours culminated in performances before the International Bluegrass Music Association

International Bluegrass Music Association

The International Bluegrass Music Association, or IBMA, is a trade association to promote bluegrass music.Formed in 1985, IBMA established its first headquarters in Owensboro, Kentucky. In 1988 they announced plans to create the International Bluegrass Music Museum as a joint venture with...

 (IBMA) in Owensboro, Kentucky, alongside Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris is an American singer-songwriter and musician. In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers' works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists including...

, Bill Monroe

Bill Monroe

William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...

, Alison Krauss

Alison Krauss

Alison Maria Krauss is an American bluegrass-country singer, songwriter and fiddler. She entered the music industry at an early age, winning local contests by the age of ten and recording for the first time at fourteen. She signed with Rounder Records in 1985 and released her first solo album in...

, Ralph Stanley

Ralph Stanley

Ralph Stanley , also known as Dr. Ralph Stanley, is an American bluegrass artist, known for his distinctive singing and banjo playing.-Biography:...

, Doyle Lawson

Doyle Lawson

Doyle Lawson is an American bluegrass and gospel musician. Doyle is best known as an accomplished mandolin player, vocalist, producer, and leader of the 5-man group Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver.-Biography:...

, Hot Rize

Hot Rize

Hot Rize is a bluegrass band that rose to prominence in the early 1980s. Established in 1978, the founding members were Mike Scap , Tim O'Brien on mandolin and fiddle, Pete Wernick on banjo and Charles Sawtelle on bass....

, Peter Rowan, and others. The Rank Strangers were also headliners at the Station Inn

Station Inn

The Station Inn is a concert venue in Nashville, Tennessee that hosts bluegrass acts. Frommers wrote that it is "widely regarded as one of the best bluegrass venues around"...

 in Nashville, and the Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

, Kentucky, music festival, supporting guitar legend Tony Rice

Tony Rice

Tony Rice is an American acoustic guitarist and bluegrass musician. He is considered one of the most influential acoustic guitar players in bluegrass, progressive bluegrass, newgrass and acoustic jazz.Rice spans the range of acoustic music, from traditional bluegrass to jazz-influenced New...

's bluegrass band.

Bluegrass Unlimited

Bluegrass Unlimited

Bluegrass Unlimited is a monthly music magazine "dedicated to the furtherance of bluegrass and old-time musicians, devotees and associates." First published in 1966, as of 2008 the magazine had a circulation of more than 25,000 copies and is widely considered the premier magazine for bluegrass music...

, the bible of bluegrass music, declared that "the Rank Strangers have a unique angle on bluegrass music, and ought to be proud of making their own brand of music come out on top in the Land Down Under." BU described Uluru as "one of the most intellectually stimulating bluegrass works of recent years, and it cannot be restricted to mere national boundaries." The band was the subject of a feature article in the December 1988 issue of the magazine. In 1990, the Rank Strangers finished second in the world (to a Czech band), in an international competition sponsored by the IBMA.

Selected discography

• Dust on the Bible. RCA (Nicholls and Dimes) (1988) (finalist, Australian Country Music Awards)
• Uluru. Larrikin Records (Australia) (1989) (finalist, Australian Country Music Awards)
• Kamara. Troubadour Records (Australia) (1990)

External links

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htb8Ueijpyc&feature=share (live performances)
• http://www.bluegrassmusic.com
• http://www.ibma.org/
• Banjo player Peter Somerville's website: http://www.myspace.com/petersomerville
• Forrester, Gary. Houseboating in the Ozarks. Dufour Editions (2006) ISBN 978-0-8023-1342-3 (hardcover); ISBN 978-0-8023-1341-6 (paperback)